Transgender athlete Schuyler Bailar is breaking records the hard way — by being himself. The Harvard University swimmer, who was assigned female at birth, is the first openly transgender athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division 1 men’s team.

Bailar, 21, began his transition shortly before starting college in 2014. He wants LGBTQ youth to know that athletes like him exist.

“I mean me as a trans athlete who’s healthy, who’s happy, who’s out there, who’s succeeding, who’s doing what he loves, who gets to be who he is — I want kids to see that,” Bailar told NBC News.

Bailar went to high school in Virginia, where he was a star competitor on the girl’s swim team. His junior year, he broke his back during a mountain biking trip, rendering him unable to swim.

“Breaking my back broke me,” Bailar said, "because up until then swimming was my entire life.”

Bedridden for several months, Bailar began to reflect on his life. Before high school, he was a tomboy who wore boy’s clothes and had short hair. Classmates bullied him, so he grew his hair long and started wearing girl’s clothes. Swimming became a way for him to cope with his discomfort, he explained, and he was miserable without the comfort of the sport.

“I got very depressed,” Bailar said. “I developed an eating disorder, and I developed a lot of self harm issues that would come later that year, that would come in response to that kind of depression, that kind of lack of motivation, lack of direction, and it was really hard.”

Bailar's back eventually healed, and he began swimming again the middle of his junior year. But once the swim season ended, his mental health deteriorated, and he spent his senior year in a deep depression. He took a year off after he graduated to deal with his eating disorder.

“I was in such a deep trough at the end of my senior year — the middle of my second semester of my senior year — that I really needed to go to a rehab center to get better.”

During the 131 days he spent in treatment, Bailar said he began to realize he was transgender. But Harvard University had already recruited him to swim for the women’s team. Read more via NBC